


Flying Like a Stream of Thunder

by dynamicsymmetry



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bathing/Washing, Choking, Disturbing Themes, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Frottage, Gunplay, Hand Jobs, M/M, Masturbation, Name-Calling, Oral Sex, Rick Grimes is a human disaster area, Smut, Suicidal Thoughts, Violent Thoughts, a vaguely canine dominance/submission thing which is informal and to which no one will admit, effed up chronology
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-28
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-03-09 10:03:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 19,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3245549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Daryl is still mostly sticking with Plan A, but he can see Plan B rapidly approaching. Like an oncoming train, whistle shrieking, light blinding him. He's frozen and it's way, way too late to get off the track."</p>
<p>A series of vignettes concerning some troubling and confusing things.  Chronologically this will probably be all over the place and should not be assumed to be in any particular linear order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. you say you're lonely, I say you'll think about it

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, so. I meant this to be a little porn nothingness and it became a little more than that, so now it will be multiple things. This is the first thing. 
> 
> Overall title/chapter title source and also general theme song is FKA twigs' ["Two Weeks."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yDP9MKVhZc)

Everything is under control.

It's easier to think that way. He's gotten very good at convincing himself of that. It's something he's noticed, how good he is at it - something of which, for a while, he was explicitly aware. Everything out of control? Just fucking lie to yourself. Engage your pattern recognition, crank it up until it sort of breaks in just the right way. Find lots of convenient pieces of evidence to convince yourself that everything is _under control,_ everything is _fine._

And then, when it becomes too hard to convince yourself anymore, when not even _you_ are a good enough liar to pull off this specific lie, tell yourself that it doesn't matter.

Daryl is still mostly sticking with Plan A, but he can see Plan B rapidly approaching. Like a fucking oncoming train, whistle shrieking, light blinding him. He's frozen and it's way, way too late to get off the track.

Then he tells himself it's not there and everything is all right again.

Everything is all right, and under control, and his life isn't going in some very confusing and troubling directions lately.

It's not at all troubling and confusing that Rick has him pressed up against the concrete wall of this dingy basement equipment room and is unzipping his fly. It's not at all troubling that he can feel Rick's stubble scraping against his jaw, breath against his ear - no words, there are hardly ever any words when they do this and that's probably all for the best - and it's certainly not troubling that simply this _alone_ is making him shiver, making him have to bite his lip to keep from fucking whimpering.

Those fingers aren't troubling. At all. How he presses forward against them, rolls his hips; how he feels - rather than hears - Rick laughing in a way that's almost more of a breathy little sigh. It's not troubling _or_ confusing how his own hand is moving down and in and cupping Rick's cock through his pants, tracing the shape of him, making that laugh completely _into_ a sigh that has some bass to it, some vibration, some real _weight._

It's not troubling or confusing how easy it is to press himself forward until it's not really even hands anymore but just bodies, just the two of them, hands with no room to operate and he doesn't need that, just Rick hard against him this way is enough, and he's actually thanking some vague species of god that they're pretty evenly matched in height because again - easy. Easy, right?

Too easy, and that's not troubling. At all.

This place is a cavern. It feels like that more than anything else - not a building but something deep and dark and full of moving shadows. Smells like the underground - musty. Old. Sometimes he lies in his cell and he thinks about Hell - not fire and brimstone and dancing demons, not like the vivid images verbally painted by the yelling revival preacher he saw once as a kid. Scared him half to death, and then later he thought about death and about what happened to kids like him in places like this who had thoughts like he sometimes did, so he put it away. Put it away deep. Deep underground, in his own personal caves.

They get cluttered. Hard to find things down there.

Now he and Rick are down there. The world of light and people is above them and they'll go back there, eventually - go back and pretend. Leave this down here. Not the tombs, not the dead, but...

Rick finally snakes a hand between them, snakes weirdly talented fingers around Daryl's cock, and all this mulling disappears under a general sort of _nnnggh._ His head hits the wall. It doesn't hurt. His eyes are open and staring up at a webwork of rusty pipes and he's breathing in rough little pants.

One day he'll ask where and how exactly Rick got this good at this particular thing, because frankly he would not have guessed.

Not troubling. Nope.

Lips on his jaw, his adam's apple, lips sucking and then teeth and God mother of _fuck_ and he gets his own hand moving again, sort of frantic, somehow drags together the dexterity to drag Rick's cock free of his pants and presses them together, hands trapped and tangled and confused _\- yes okay this is very confusing still -_ but he's shoving himself forward, hard, rolling his hips until they're grinding together and he feels a wave of hot satisfaction when the gasp Rick lets out is distinctly surprised.

So he's not the only one surprised by things. That's probably good.

Still troubling, though.

Both hands free. Rick had him pinned against the wall - troubling _and_ confusing how much he liked that the first time it happened and how much he continues to do so - but now things feel a little more equal, and he curls a hand around the back of Rick's neck, arches his own, bears his teeth and prays he doesn't have to ask for what he wants now. He actually _knows what he wants,_ Jesus Christ.

Teeth on him, more than that light scrape. Points, edges. He hisses, tightens his hand, and Rick _bites_ him, hard enough to _hurt,_ hard enough to leave marks maybe, and this is _really_ fucked up but for once it feels so good that he's not troubled _or_ confused and he's not second guessing it. That grind has become a steady rhythm, and later - lying in his bunk in that above-ground world of light and people - he'll think about what it means that they move so well together. That they find that rhythm without any trouble. So hot and so hard and so utterly fucking perfect, perfect even though the entire thing is a troubling, confusing, _total_ mess.

Down here in the underworld, he finally gives up trying to be quiet and moans.

He's not sure he ever made a noise like that in his life.

He feels Rick stiffen, again that little surprised hiss of breath, and Daryl clenches his teeth and moves faster and thinks _God you motherfucker you motherFUCKER_ and it's that, the harder bite on the underside of his jaw, how far down they are and how badly he wants to stay here which sends him crashing through the floor, a blazing rocket straight down into that Hell that scared the shit out of him in those days when he was scaring the shit out of himself with the help of everyone around him. Sends it down and sets it on fucking _fire._

Through it, through the hard whine bleeding out between his teeth, he feels his own come hot and slick between them, and then Rick is stiffening again, shuddering against him, and somehow he loves that just as much and that. That.

It's so confusing.

Rick can come in total silence. Daryl is very jealous of that.

The silence spreads out around them like fog. For a moment - a long moment - everything goes still in that silence, everything except how hard they're breathing against each other, the dimness of this lost and nameless place and how, just for that long moment, it feels lonely.

Except there's them. And suddenly Rick is leaning on him, one hand braced on the wall and the other on Daryl's hip, his face pressed into the hollow of Daryl's neck. Warm. Solid. Just for that long moment Daryl is almost holding him, and it's like the entire room is holding its breath, and that's the most confusing thing that's happened since this all started.

He's supposed to do something here. He feels it.

He has no idea what it is.

Anyway it doesn't matter, because Rick pushes back, pushes himself away, and then it's just sort of a question of figuring out what to do with themselves. No eye contact. That part is important. No eye contact because. Well.

_What might they see?_

There are rules here and he follows them, because that's what he does.

A few minutes later, down here alone, finishing the task of wiping himself off with a loose rag and sliding down the side of one of the big metal cabinets set against the far wall, Daryl rests his elbows on his knees and leans his head back and thinks _Well, that happened._

Which is about as far as he usually gets.

The underside of his jaw hurts. He finds that pain, uses it as a center, focuses on it and lets it send all those troubling and confusing thoughts and feelings and whatever... Send them away.

Everything is all right. Yep. That refrain, that lie which he's still able to sustain because Plan B is not _yet_ necessary, and thank Christ for that, because he's not sure he'll be very good at Plan B. Everything is all right. Everything is fine. Nothing troubling or confusing about any of this.

_That happened._

Everything is under control.


	2. smoke on your skin to get those pretty eyes rolling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chronology: Somewhere between s2 and s3. I dunno, you figure it out.

There's no point picking out the exact moment it starts. It doesn't change anything.

But oh, _fine_ \- in his dreams Daryl goes back there anyway. He goes back there a lot. Sometimes he wakes up and thinks _This is because I can't figure any of it the fuck out so this is what my head is spending its spare time on, so that's just great._ Replaying it over and over.

So stupid. Really fucking stupid. Both of them - that's not them. Suicidal. Even if they were inside. Stupid for that reason too, because weren't the quarters always close? Wouldn't it have been so easy for someone to hear, someone to see? No one sleeps deeply now anyway. The whole fucking world has chronic insomnia.

Lack of sleep makes you literally insane. That could be an explanation. Not a very good one, but hey.

No words. The house is reasonably secure, few entrance points without risking getting trapped. All barricaded in, at least for a night. People getting some weary privacy, people bedding down under a real roof for a change. First time since the farm burned. Everyone is exhausted, fractious, not talking much, and when they talk and it's not to shout directions or warnings they're snapping at each other. About everything. About nothing.

All this tension, churning around between everyone. Waiting for a spark. Something to trigger a release.

This wasn't that. Was too unreal. Later Daryl isn't even sure it happened. Until it happens again.

He doesn't usually jerk off. It's not that he _never_ does, it's just not something of which he makes a practice. It's almost like he doesn't get around to it. That's mostly how he is with sex in general; for most of his existence there hasn't been a lot of it, not because he hates it but simply because it's never seemed all that important next to other things. And now it seems even less important when there is - to put it very mildly - _a lot of other stuff going on._

But now and then he does want to, more like releasing pressure more than anything else. It doesn't feel like pleasure so much as it feels like maintenance. And there's something about being on the run like this - not a quick sprint between places but what's beginning to feel like a goddamn marathon - that's getting to him. Stringing him out for something. Fucking with his head.

So here he is - not on watch, he's not a complete asshole - in the secluded corner of the back hall he's claimed for his own, leaning back against the wall with a cigarette dangling from his lips and his hand in his pants.

He can be quiet. He's had to learn that. He can be quick and he can be very quiet, but he's never been able to be completely silent, so as he works himself up, moves a little faster and a little slower both together and coaxes that heat up to a low burn, his teeth close on his bottom lip and his head drops back, and he almost manages to suppress the quiet, rough sound that bleeds out of him.

And for some reason he's not moving as quickly as usual. He's taking his time.

He's leaning in a corner beneath a stairway, by a boarded up window, and through a crack he can see the moon. It's high and though it's waning it's still nearly full, and as he strokes himself he thinks in a vague kind of way that it's beautiful. A beautiful thing in the midst of so much ugliness.

He knows no one would look at him and think he thinks about shit like that. He's well aware of how he comes off. It shouldn't matter. Most of the time it doesn't.

But he can't stop looking at it. No walkers that he can see or even hear, just the distant hoot of an owl and something moving in the woods, something definitely alive, and as his hand tightens and that low burn of pleasure builds itself higher, he thinks that this means _he's_ alive, that if he can do this and feel this way he's alive and that's one of the ways he'll know, and something about that...

How can _that_ turn him on? But it does. The sheer fact of it, how remarkable it is, that what he feels when he strokes his own cock is in the same league as his breathing, his heartbeat - more, more. Because he doesn't think about those most of the time but right now this feels so fucking good.

He slides the cigarette between two left fingers and pulls it free of his mouth, bites his lip again as a deeper sound presses against the wall of his chest - almost a groan. He doesn't need to understand this. So it's weird; everything is weird now, all the rules are indefinitely suspended, and jerking off in the back hall of an abandoned house with smoke in his mouth and moonlight in his eyes isn't even all that strange in the broader scheme of things.

This, though. When he swings his eyes away from the moon, and...

This.

Just for a moment he freezes. Freezes completely, not even blinking - hand still tight around his cock and wet thumb in the act of sweeping over the head.

Getting caught jerking off is a kid thing to worry about and he should be past it - and he is. What he feels, looking at Rick there in the dimness, staring at him, isn't shame but instead vague irritation, and a weird, confusing sort of aggression. The first time he saw Rick, Rick had just fucked him over, fucked _Merle_ over, but things changed and are changing and probably will continue to change. If this is any indication. So the aggression he feels now isn't anything to do with what _was,_ but it's...

It's definitely still there.

Rick doesn't say anything. He's just standing there. His face is completely unreadable.

At some point one of them is going to have to do something because this is starting to feel sort of ridiculous.

He's not sure what makes him do it. He's never done anything even remotely like it. Never. Not with women, and God, fucking... _Definitely_ never with a man. Never. Never. Never that, no matter what he's caught himself thinking sometimes. But all the rules are on indefinite suspension, and maybe that means some internal rules too.

Maybe he wants to break them all. Just for a second. Shatter them and leave them scattered through the dark, illuminated by the moon like shards of bone.

The cigarette is still dangling from his fingers and he lifts it, takes a long drag, releases the smoke in a slow stream through his nose, and doesn't drop his gaze for one second as his hand starts to move again.

So then Rick moves too.

This is the first time he's shoved back against the wall. This is the first time he feels Rick's hand on him, over his, like he's guiding Daryl through motions he already knows so well. Making him rougher with himself, making him move harder. This is the first time Rick destroys all the challenge in him, and it's the first time Rick burns down all his resistance, and it's the first time all of this confused, amazing sensory input smashes into him - the smell of sweat and smoke and thick, dark sex, his breathing and Rick's hard and close and just as strained as his, even though he's pretty sure Rick isn't doing anything but touching him. The quick glimpses of his eyes, the hollow of his throat, parted lips. Those thin beams of moonlight.

This is not anywhere near the last time for any of these things.

The cigarette slips from between Daryl's fingers and he thinks _Oh God I am so fucked._

Rick makes him come. It's still his own hand, in the end Rick only has his fingers curled tight around Daryl's left wrist - pinning him against the wall almost like someone he's about to frisk - but let's not fuck around here, let's not kid ourselves: Rick is the one who makes him come, and if he comes it's because Rick has decided he will. Daryl lets out a hard, sharp grunt, biting back the rest of it, and all he sees is the moonlight.

His wrist hurts. The rest of everything is warm and buzzing, and his fingers are hot and slick.

He has no idea what the fuck just happened.

Reality floods back in on him. He's ready to shove Rick back, ready to ask him what the _fuck_ he thinks he's doing, has he lost his fucking _mind,_ his fucking _wife_ is in the next room and his _kid_ and all of them and what the _hell_ is this even about, who the fuck does he even think he _is_ , what, does he think Daryl is, some kind of fucking _faggot,_ is that how he wants this to go, but Rick hasn't lifted his hand away, still pinning Daryl with the other, and before he realizes what's happening Rick is pulling his wrist up, lifting Daryl's slick hand to his own mouth.

He's staring into Daryl's eyes. As he forces him to lick his own come off his fingers.

And really, Rick doesn't even have to force him.

He does it. He does it, tastes himself, salt and bitter, and he feels wave after wave of shame and fear and need and hot, deep arousal - all of it so hopelessly entangled that he's not sure any of it works without all the other parts in place - and both below and above it, an intense and vaguely canine desire to _please_ this man.

_I. Am. So. Fucked._

Rick releases him. Not just releases; Rick gives him a little _shove_ as he pushes back, pushes him harder against the wall, and the message is pretty clear. No words necessary. No words can even really capture it, but basically: if this was about dominance, Daryl lost the game before he even started to play.

Did he even want to win?

Rick is gone into the shadows. The cigarette is still burning, a tiny red coal, and after a moment Daryl bends and picks it up, lifts it to his lips and inhales slowly.

The moon is setting. He can still taste himself on his tongue.

This is how he knows he's alive. This isn't the only way, but it's one way, and he knows - he's _sure_ \- that no matter how fucked up it is and no matter how bad he should probably feel, he's going to want to be reminded like this again.

And somehow he's sure that Rick is going to want to remind him.

So that's where and when. Okay? That's it.

So just fuck off.


	3. so lonely trying to be yours

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chronology: no idea when the fuck this is happening except it's post-s3.

_We can have this._

He wants to grab Rick by the shoulders, shake him, shake him until his fucking teeth rattle in his head. This is a kind of frustration he's never known before, because he's never _wanted_ anything like this before. How long did it take him? Months. Well over a year. Just to admit it to himself, just to get comfortable enough with all of it, drag it into the light and make himself look. That it's not just about sneaking away now and then when the pressure builds and they both need the reminder that they're still alive, that it's not about him rolling over and baring his belly and throat for a goddamn alpha wolf. Maybe once it was about that, but aren't they past it now?

They were past it when Rick looked him in the eye and said _I need you._

So what the fuck did that even mean? 

He never really understood what it meant to be _needed._ What he wants now. What he wants to do. Something beyond getting shoved against walls and grasping and fumbling, hard, fast orgasms that leave him feeling confused and increasingly almost sad. Something beyond those touches that _almost_ turn into something else and then veer back into familiar territory. Now and then it's like they edge up to something and back away again. 

Except maybe he doesn't want to back away anymore. Could be he wants to get to that edge or line or whatever it is and see what's on the other side. 

Like if it's just about some kind of distant, flat version of sex he's not actually a faggot and Rick isn't either, if they don't get too close, if it doesn't get soft. If they don't linger. He's been so afraid of it. Rick never shows any sign of fear but Daryl has begun to wonder if he is. 

Who even gives a fuck anymore? I mean, who would? The others would probably learn to deal with it. You can have a problem with two guys getting up to shit like this but in the end you're running again and it's just about breathing from second to second, so you get over it or you fucking die.

They keep losing people. Sooner or later they might lose everyone. Sooner or later, Daryl thinks, _I'm going to lose you._

_Or you'll lose me._

_So why can't we have this?_

Wanting to touch a little slower, a little softer. He's seen Rick naked but he's never taken the time to look. Find out how he feels about that. If that's something he wants more of. Hands on rough skin, hard muscle, exploring. Hands on him, everywhere. Flashes of incoherent fantasies when he's stroking himself, performing _maintenance._ Getting pushed back. Pushed down. Mouth working against his, slow. 

Sweet. 

He can't want this. He can't. But part of him - louder and louder - disagrees.

_We can have this. Man up. Life is literally too short for this bullshit._

He comes so close to saying it. Over and over. Once he cups Rick's face, turns it to his, opens his mouth, and he thinks he might speak or he thinks he might lean in and take what Rick has never given him, but then it doesn't happen and it's gone. He's chicken-shit and Rick probably doesn't want it anyway. He has no idea what Rick's deal is, but if Rick did want it, that, more, hands and mouths and slow, wouldn't he take it? Wouldn't he let Daryl know?

God, he has no fucking idea, but he's so tired of being troubled, and he's so tired of being confused. 

_We can have this._

Yeah. Okay. 

There are a lot of things no one gets to have anymore.


	4. I guess I'm stuck with me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chronology: between s3 and s4, prior to the plague and the fall of the prison. It's also _prior_ to the previous chapter. I think. I know this is confusing, just go with it. 
> 
> [Soundtrack.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFtMl-uipA8)

  _Just._

One of the last of the good days. He'll think that later. He'll look back on it and he'll see it in a whole new context, with a whole new fucking perspective. Perspective means a lot more than it used to. There are all kinds of things you never understand until you have some distance.

One of the last of the good days, when things were almost easy, when everything was fitting into place, when people were actually sleeping well at night and hardly anyone was ever really hungry. He knew - he _knows_ \- how dangerous it is to get comfortable but like so many dangerous things the allure is incredible. There's a kind of eroticism in comfort, he's coming to realize. Relaxing becomes sexy in and of itself. And that's something else new and something else dangerous - he's actually thinking of things as _sexy._

More things than ever before.

He hasn't yet started getting really frustrated, hasn't yet started getting to the point where he feels like a bowstring drawn back and back until it's ready to break. But he's starting to feel tight, feel tense, because more and more this is something _good,_ something he enjoys, something he thinks he could look forward to, and that's weird and confusing as fuck and it's making him question all sorts of things, and it's making him feel all kinds of sharp little spines of residual shame and fear, but really...

Really he just wants to be able to enjoy it.

And that is so fucking dangerous.

  _Just._

One word. Singular and hissing and as tight and tense as he's beginning to feel. Even just a little desperate. It's what he gets out before he drops to his knees.

Here's a thing pretty much everyone knows: Daryl Dixon is bad with words. Here's a thing almost no one knows: Daryl Dixon is bad with words because he has _so goddamn many of them,_ swarming over each other like ants, throwing themselves against the inside of his skull, shrieking themselves into his ears until it's all a hopeless tangle and he can barely string any of them together into what he wants to say. The more he feels about something, the worse it gets, and right now he thinks he feels about twenty or thirty different things about Rick Grimes and almost all of them are in violent disagreement with each other.

So what he's had to become good at is doing things.

And he is. Some things. Sometimes he's very good at it. Sometimes he can pick out little details, anticipate things; sometimes, _often,_ he'll know what to do in situations where everyone seems to be at a loss. It feels good, those times. Feels like he actually has control over things. Feels like he's worth a damn, which he feels like more and more these days. He likes being able to Do Things.

He likes making people happy.

Which is why there are times when he thinks back to that moon-soaked hallway, his dick in his hand and Rick pinning him against the wall, forcing him - without even having to _do_ much, without having to say a _word_ \- to suck his own come off every one of his fingers. Lick it off the side of his palm. Forcing him but not _forcing_ him, because he looked into Rick's eyes then and he knows - will admit to himself now - that in that moment of hot insanity he would have done whatever Rick told him to do.

Maybe let Rick do whatever he wanted to _him._

Lost his mind then. Hasn't gotten it back since. You go crazy in the moonlight, Daryl thinks. Go out of your fucking mind and start howling. That's why they call it lunacy.

In his mind is Rick's face, moonlit, marble, only not like that. Like something else. Like how it might be if everything was different. If the good days could just keep going, just keep getting better. If they could get over their damn selves.

If Rick could.

  _Just._

Back in the underworld, only this room has windows, high-set but there all the same, and instead of moonlight it's sun streaming through. Spilling across the floor, across both of them. It's almost like fighting, and sometimes Daryl almost wishes it _would_ be because if it was fighting there would be more touching, which he aches for and which he shouldn't. And he always fights a little. Always puts up a little bit of a token resistance. Once it was serious but now it feels more like playing, and he wonders if it feels like that to Rick, and what he'd love to do - if he could make all the words settle down and get into an orderly line so he can sort through them and pick the right ones - is frame Rick's face with his hands and say

 _Just all I wanna do is make you feel good, why can't you let me do that, why does it have to be this big thing where we pretend that's not what it is, why won't you look me in the eye when we're doin' this, why won't you_ kiss _me if this is how it's gonna go, I know that's absolutely fuckin' crazy but didn't we hit that exit about a hundred miles back, aren't we pretty fuckin'_ deep _in crazy at this point, and oh, by the way, Rick, while we're talkin', maybe you could take a sec and explain to me how exactly it is that I'm just this redneck asshole who woulda munched on about fifteen separate curbs if I ever did anything like this in what we're all startin' to think of as Before but I still apparently have my shit together enough to know what this is and what I think I might want it to be?_

 _You don't have your shit together any more than I do and I think you probably have it together a whole fuck_ _of a lot_ less _._

  _Just._

It's that. That's what he actually says, all he actually says. That's how much he gets out. Rick is pulling back a little, looks sort of surprised - because they _don't talk_ when they do this, that's one of the Rules - and then somehow Daryl is pushing _him_ back for once, back against the wall, and hears a sharp, satisfying little exhalation when Rick's back hits concrete.

And then Daryl's on his knees.

He's bad with words. But he can do things. So okay. Okay, fine, _fuck_ you, _Rick fucking Grimes, see if this penetrates,_ and as he drags Rick's fly open he's actually almost laughing.

He can do things. Can't find words, so there are other things he can do with his mouth, since it isn't occupied.

He doesn't see Rick staring at him - he'd beg for eye contact if he could but apparently he's too chicken-shit to actually go after it - but he can feel it. It's also satisfying. As always when he does something, he's sort of feeling like he's in control. On his knees, curling his fingers around Rick's cock and pulling it free, he still feels like he's actually got the upper hand.

The chaos of words in his head - neglected now and possibly annoyed about that - is arranging itself into bad double entendres. Okay, sure. Whatever.

Maybe Rick was about to say something _\- yeah,_ Daryl thinks, _you break the rules for a change, you fucking dick -_ but instead he lets out another gasp, something that's close to a moan. He doesn't only make these little sessions wordless; Rick rarely makes _any_ kind of sound, and that he's already doing this much?

_Fuckin' love it._

Daryl squeezes his eyes shut, smells sweat and sex and _Rick,_ and doesn't think about it any further than that. If he does he'll chicken out and he can't do that, because he has to _do something,_ because...

Because someone has to.

So he's sort of angry about it when he wraps his hand around the base of Rick's cock, when he leans in, when he opens his mouth and slides his lips over the head, but as soon as Rick moans - _really_ moans, a thick and low and vaguely astonished sound - the anger vanishes and he just sort of hurts. He has to _do_ this, instead of just saying it.

  _Just._

_I just wanna make you feel good._

And then he would do this anyway, because it doesn't matter that he's never done it before; if he can make Rick make a noise like that he'll pretty much do it forever.

But he also. Also.

He _likes_ it.

Fuck, he does, and he's almost shivering as he takes Rick deeper, slides his mouth down as far as he can, until Rick's cock nudges the back of his throat and he has to try not to gag. He thinks he might even like gagging. The taste of him, salt but almost sweet where he can taste precome, the weight of him, the thickness, the softness of the skin. Before, he never really got as far as even thinking about it in terms of these details, thinking about what it might _really be like if he really did it_ , but now they're here, all this sensual input pounding in on him from all sides, and there aren't any words. None. There's just Rick's cock in his mouth, the slide of Daryl's lips as he finds a rhythm, and Rick's heady, breathless moans.

He wants to look up. He really does. He wants to look up and _see_ what he's doing. Breaking all the rules is what he's fucking doing, even if he isn't talking. Fumbling handjobs are one thing.

This is really fucking _queer._

Sunlight on his closed eyelids - it must have moved just enough, in just the right way. He's moving his hand with his mouth now - he's never done this, yeah, but it's not _that_ complicated and he's a fast learner - swirling his tongue against the underside, feeling the flutter of Rick's pulse, pulling back just enough to lap at the head. Getting into it. Like, _really_ into it. Ordinarily he might be panicking about that.

But in his head is a silent hallway drenched in moonlight.

Absolute, beautiful lunacy.

He's only half aware that his free hand is working his own pants open, reaching in and taking hold of his own cock. He's focused on Rick even as he starts to jerk himself off, every sense but one, even the pain - the increasing ache of his lips and tongue, his knees on the hard concrete - but on some level he can feel the pressure building in himself, and the inside of his lids is turning blood-red in the relentless sunlight, and he opens them and looks up. And Rick is staring down at him.

_Contact._

Like a punch in the fucking face.

He comes. Right then. There's no preamble, no buildup, no rising action. He's there and aching and needing every part of this and then he's coming so unbelievably fucking _hard,_ groaning deep in his throat, his chest, every part of him all the way out to his fucking fingertips. Vibrating with it. Buzzing. Thousands of tiny voices bleeding out through his skin.

All the words he just can't find a way to say.

Later he'll think about what if it was _that_ , what if it was watching him come that made it happen for Rick, and wouldn't you know it, would you ever believe: he'll come all over again.

Oh, this is jerk-off material for _weeks._

There's an audible _thump_ as the back of Rick's head hits the wall, a choked cry, and then a rush of hot, slick salt in his mouth, on his tongue and running back toward his throat. He shudders like coming all over again and reflexively he swallows. Swallows and sort of can't deal with that at all.

He can do things. He sure fucking can.

Just for a moment there's nothing. Then Daryl tips backward slightly, releases Rick and catches himself on one hand, his other still curled around his own cock. Somehow - maybe because he's just stunned into not being afraid of anything - he looks up and meets Rick's gaze again, and what he sees there...

_Oh, God._

All moonlight. All cool pale blue.

He can do things, and he knows what to do.

He didn't look away that first time and he doesn't look away now as he lifts his hand to his mouth and starts to lick it clean.

Rick watches him. Watches him until he's done, expression absolutely unreadable. Before Daryl didn't know the right words, and now he has no fucking idea what he's feeling, except ashamed and scared and sort of sick and just _incredibly_ turned on.

_Just._

His eyes slip closed, the taste of Rick's and his come mingling on his tongue, and then he feels Rick's fingers combing through his hair.

Slow. Gentle. He leans into it with something like a soft whimper, presses his head up against Rick's palm. He can't help it. Everything else disappears and this is perfect, this is everything he wants it to be.

_You his bitch now?_

He has a different answer for that question.

_God, yes._

Then it's gone. He opens his eyes and he's alone.

  _Just._

Somehow he's always the last one out of here.

~

One of the last of the good days. The good days never last. They never last long enough to yield something even better. Maybe they were close, he thinks later. Maybe they were on the edge of that Something. Caught a glimpse of it and then it was gone. Might never get it back. Everything is different now, even if it really isn't all that much.

Everything is always falling apart.

But he still has all the words. They're still in there, trying to get out, and maybe one of these days - one of these moonlit nights - he'll figure out exactly how to say what he wants to say, he'll get out more than one word, and it'll all be right.

Until then...

Well. There are things he can do.


	5. on a new road with no true north

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have a vaguely depressing thing to round out your Valentine's Day. You're welcome. 
> 
> Chronology: 3x08.
> 
> Title from Glen Hansard's ["The Storm, It's Coming".](https://youtube.com/watch?v=Y4u7Cy9LMB8)

_I need you._

There are only a very few things which could have kept him back, kept him standing there. A few things. He couldn't list them if he tried but he knows there's more than one. But the others don't matter, because this is the one in front of him, and it doesn't smack him in the face; it grips his jaw, not painfully but firm, makes him look at it, holds him in place. 

From the beginning - well, not the _beginning,_ but the beginning of _this_ \- it's Rick's eyes which have held him. Grabbed him. Pulled him in. Which is why, in his more honestly introspective moments, Daryl doesn't even think this is really about sex, _per se._ If it was, that part wouldn't be a thing. It's Rick's eyes and how when they meet his they simultaneously twist everything into knots and...

They smooth everything out. He can float in them. It's peaceful there. All he has to worry about is following. Trusting. Being led. 

Or it's becoming that way. He knew the potential was there. The seed was planted. It's growing now. 

Here's what comes later:

There are a lot of things he doesn't articulate to himself at all, because the process would push him into very dangerous territory. He senses them, fumbles at them, feels their edges. Sex is something he can get a handle on, even if it's a slippery handle and even if it's one with which he's still honestly getting acquainted. It's about bodies. Bodies are easy. 

But if it was really just about sex, about groping hands, it wouldn't mean absolutely everything that Rick Grimes looked him in the eye and said _I need you._

Not _we._ He said about Glenn, and there's Maggie, and they're clearly both in bad shape and by now he thinks of them all almost as family and he'd fight for them, but there's Merle, Merle who was supposed to be dead, or he was pretty sure, and he has to go, maybe it's not convenient and maybe it's even a fucking betrayal of some things, but there's his _family,_ all he really has left and all he had for so long, his blood...

And Rick says _I need you,_ and Daryl has no idea what to do with that. 

Later he'll think about it and he'll realize that it was the first time in his life he really wanted to kiss someone. 

And no, not sex. Not Rick pinning him against a fucking all, not their cocks in their hands, and rolling together, grinding together, not rough panting and his own strained moans and Rick's fucking silence and the deeper silence that comes after. Not those confusing and troubling things. This would be easy. Simple. Not now - God, this is hilariously terrible timing, it would be like something out of the most twisted, most bizarre fucking dream - but he thinks about if they make it out of this, get home, figure this whole fucking thing out, and there's a way to fix it, there's a way to fix everything, and maybe then, _then,_ there's the possibility. 

Crazy. Fucking crazy. _Lunacy._

But in this shard of a second he's carved off for himself, cupping in his hands and turning it over and over to catch the light, he can think about it. Because _I need you._

_I._

_Need you._

Later: In some parallel alternate universe where a few select things are different it would be possible. Hand against Rick's neck, pulling him in, letting himself be pulled, slow, arching their mouths together, feeling how they fit. How they might fit. It's been a long time since he kissed anyone but he could figure it out. He could. It's not that complicated. Not even sex, just... feeling that. Close. Tipping their foreheads together. Feeling how they prop each other up, how they hold each other. Leaving the rest of the bullshit for the dead to devour. The world is going to hell but maybe they could be all right. With everyone. 

All of this comes later, again, you understand. Much later, much _much_ later, when he's looking back on it in the middle of everything else just getting worse and worse, grasping for every good thing he can find. Even things that only hinted at other things. Because that was a moment. It was something. 

It was just about those words and who was saying them. It never went any further than that. 

Rick fucking Grimes says _I need you_ and suddenly that's the only thing it's about. 

And it's not like his heart isn't being ripped to shreds right now but Rick fucking Grimes says _I need you_ and suddenly that's the only thing it's about. 

_Are you with me?_

And he wishes this wasn't so fucking painful but of course that's the only way it can be. 

_I need you. Are you with me?_

_Yeah._

He puts those three words away and he keeps them. Later there will be another three, and they'll be everything he needs in that moment, after he's lost so much and he's so troubled and so confused and in so much pain he has no idea what to do. 

Three words and three words. 

And he can hope, someday, for three more.


	6. command me to be well

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Less smutty. More sad. :( Wanted to explore how Rick might have reacted to Daryl's state of mind post-Coda. So this happened.

It’s before he breaks, breaks in the sense that his rage and his hatred for himself and the world and the place he occupies in it boils over into a cigarette burn on his hand, but there are other breakages. He’s crumbling. He’s trying so desperately to hold it together but he’s slowly falling like a building in the process of demolition. The charges have been set and set off, and dust is rising from around the base of him in a colorless cloud, but his tumble is long and slow, taking a little while to get going.

He’s always held himself together but now he’s losing it. 

They all know, but he feels like Rick might be the only one who really understands.

So for a lot of that rolling, vague, nightmare journey, he’s keeping his exterior walls blank, featureless, hiding the destruction going on inside. He thinks with some of them he succeeds; they might know he’s taking it especially hard, might know he’s hurting, but they probably don’t know he’s dying, and they probably don’t know what he lost. 

But of course all Rick has to do is look at him and know. 

And Daryl looks back at him and feels sick. Sick deep down. Like he has cancer eating into his bones. 

So at some point in that nightmare journey, when they stop for a little while to eat and sleep and sort of look around in numb confusion, he leaves them and heads into the woods, lost in his own kind of numbness, and he doesn’t even know what he expects to find. Nothing, probably. He just can’t be with them right now. Can’t even look at their faces, because when he does all he sees is the hole in the world where hers should be. 

He doesn’t get far before he knows he’s being followed. 

He doesn’t stop. He doesn’t turn. But he does slow down. Just a bit.

Just enough. 

And he does drop the bow and turn when Rick catches up to him, turns and launches himself at him. Launches himself with fists clenched and ready to fly. This is so stupid, fighting like this exposed and in a place where it wouldn’t be that hard to get snuck up on, but he doesn’t care, because maybe he’s not suicidal exactly but he thinks he doesn’t care very much about dying, and what terrifies him now is that he’s not sure he cares very much about Rick dying either. 

Like they could all die, and that would be pretty much okay. 

Rick doesn’t fight him. This man, this man he loves more than he’ll ever know how to say, his brother, a man he’s wanted - in the past before everything truly fell apart - to think of as his lover, except now he’s so confused and so lost, and he hurts and wants to make someone else hurt, and later he’ll think that he’s so grateful it was Rick because however fucked up things between them have been, he knows he can come at this man like this and still be loved when it’s over. 

So he hits, clumsy and wild, blows not well-aimed or well-placed, and in the end he crumples and drops to the ground and Rick goes down with him, catching him, arms around him, and Daryl clenches a fist in Rick’s shirt and clings to him and sobs. 

And Rick just holds him and his hand finds its way to Daryl’s hair and strokes through it, slowly, and he’s murmuring _I know. I know. I’m so goddamn sorry, I know._

Of course he knows. 

In another place and at another time he might think of this as some kind of betrayal of a thing he never got the chance to really have, but he needs this, he _needs_ it, and he thinks Rick will give it to him. And he doesn’t even have to ask for it, doesn’t have to make the first move; Rick cups his jaw and tilts his face up, seals their mouths together, gently nudges his lips apart. Daryl moans, clings harder, gives way under it. Loosens. Opens himself to it. 

This isn’t even about sex. It’s not even about getting off, which in the past has been the only time and the only reason for which they’ve touched each other like this. It’s about being reminded that he exists, that this exists, that he isn’t dead, that he isn’t ashes. Because Rick is holding him and kissing him, kissing him so softly and so deep, and this man is an anchor. He’s gravity. Keeping Daryl from spinning off into the void. 

He isn’t betraying anything. This is his and it’s about surviving. And maybe it’s also about living. About trying to. About remembering that once he did. 

It all blurs away. Tears are still running down his cheeks, he’s a fucking mess, but he closes a hand around the nape of Rick’s neck and deepens it, deepens everything, almost crawling into Rick’s lap he wants to be so close. 

Later, much later, Rick will say _I know you lost somethin’ back there_ as if he didn’t know it right now, but they aren’t saying it. Aren’t acknowledging it. Just this. Just this, freely offered and given, and he’ll take it. 

Head against Rick’s shoulder. They’re tangled. He’s sure - though afterward he’ll wonder if he imagined it - that Rick is speaking, his voice and the words so soft. 

_Stay with me, brother. You gotta stay with me. We need you. I need you._

_I love you, so you gotta stay._

He shudders. But he’s calming. Not emptied out. He would do anything for this man, but Rick can’t heal him. But things feel more bearable. He can go back and he can go on a little further. 

He doesn’t know how much further. He doesn’t know if even Rick is strong enough to keep him here. But he’ll try. 

He’ll try.

He’ll try for them both. Him and her. 

He’ll try for all three of them.


	7. it has to hide in these exchanges

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place in the time gap between seasons 2 and 3, a couple of weeks after chapter 2. Title and very sad song is ["Talking With the Wolves"](https://youtube.com/watch?v=uZiCW4w3mI0) by Glen Hansard.

This is so stupid.

All of this is stupid.

He's gotten used to this. Stupid is sort of an intrinsic part of this. _Stupid_ is why it's happening at all. Without _stupid_ there would be no _this_ , so he decided a long time ago that stupid was worth it. Stupid actually makes some of it easier.

Stupid and crazy.

You have to be crazy to want to be put in a chokehold. Don't you? Isn't that something you shouldn't want? _Chokehold's illegal._ Hated it then, but he was so angry, and then was when he still hated Rick Grimes, hated how strong he was, hated that he was this fucking cop who strode in and started asserting his ass all over the place, telling people what to do, what was going to happen, taking all Daryl's stupid fucking anger and redirecting it like a team of highly skilled engineers redirecting the course of a river.

And he gave under it. Tried to fight it but gave. Like it was something he wanted and didn't know.

He likes to follow people. Needs it. And he likes being subdued. That's the other thing. He likes being pushed down and _made_ , _forced_ , and he liked it when Rick found him in that hallway in the moonlight and made him make himself come, and he likes it now, and there's no such thing as _illegal_ anymore, and he's not complaining.

He's pressing back. Rolling his hips a little. Trying to make this happen.

This is especially stupid given where they are, which is somewhere someone could walk in on them, but that's always the case, because it's unavoidable. Close quarters. They're all always going to be living on top of each other now, to the extent that they stay alive at all - on _top_ , place to place, always running, and he's not so stupid to think that it isn't the danger that excites him, at least a healthy part of it. Danger and new self-awareness, which is its own kind of dangerous.

Crazy, sure. Crazy like the moon. Like a wolf howling.

Burned out factory, no moon down here. This part of it is cleared out, but he came down here to double-check and Rick followed, and in the half-dark is when Daryl came at him, and he's sure Rick knew it wasn't meant, that it was goading, what Daryl wanted. It's two weeks since that hallway, and they haven't really done anything else, but they both know.

Both want it.

God, he shouldn't. It's all wrong. It's not like he cares about marriage all that much but Lori is nice, a nice woman, and he doesn't want to hurt her, and the thing is he doesn't think Rick wants to either - Rick loves his wife, loves her so much, and that much is abundantly clear, but they've all lost things, and that fucks you up. Makes you grab at things you wouldn't normally reach for.

He shoves Rick, shoves him hard, bares his teeth slightly, and they're like circling dogs until Rick pounces and gets his throat, jerks him backward. Back pressed to chest, ass to hips. Not all that effective, actually. Daryl could probably twist out of it if he wanted to.

Doesn't.

He feels more alive than he has in days. This isn't the same fumbling, numb grip on survival. This is _life_.

He reaches for Rick's arm, hand on him, not pulling but keeping him there, and he wonders if he'll be sporting a bruise later, if people will wonder how it happened. He's not sure why that turns him on but it does, the idea of being visibly _claimed_ or something, and he presses back and does that thing with his hips, and Rick is hard and that pulls a quiet groan out of him.

He's not just in this for himself. He's not just looking to get off. The hallway was one thing, but this is something else, and as he pushes back again, looking to give Rick more friction, saying with his body _Look what I can do for you, let me,_ he feels what he's really trying to get here, and it's to feel like he means something.

To feel like someone wants him for something. Like he has a job to do that isn't hunting or guarding or killing. Something that isn't pure necessity.

He wants Rick to want him, and this is the beginning of a whole new kind of total lunacy.

Rick doesn't talk. He doesn't talk now, and for the most part he won't talk later, for a while, and things will continue in that vein until they lose everything and _he_ loses everything and something changes, breaks open and he's close and burrowing in and hurting so much and needing it, and Rick will give it to him. Keep him tethered. Make him feel not needed but like someone still loves him and can love him that way. A little. For another while.

But that's later. For now Rick isn't talking, and Rick is pushing against him and breathing hard and hot in his ear, and Daryl groans again and heat pulses into his cock and God, he wants this so much. Can hardly breathe. Wants to give. Wants to be forced.

It's the only way for him, because he's not supposed to want this at all.

Rick jerks his head back, rough with him, and Daryl is rolling his hips in a steady rhythm now, grinding, wondering if he can actually make Rick come like this, if that would be stupid and crazy and of course it's both of those things, and it's also confusing and troubling, and an idea flashes into his mind that's all of these things to the nth degree - being held like this, held tight, but being pushed _into_. Being forced. That way. Forced open.

Giving under that.

It's vague. It's half-formed. But it terrifies him, and he's suddenly so full of heat and want and need that he thinks he might come right there.

 _Rick_ , the words in his head, and he wants to say them and can't, _tell me you want that, tell me you need me, just tell me, tell me._

He doesn't like this man, except he does. Is beginning to. Wants to make him feel like this. Wants to make him happy.

Before, the ghost of his brother asked him if he was becoming Rick's bitch and he said no and he was already lying so fucking hard.

That faster, harder grind. Rick grinding back, breathing heavier and shallower, and Daryl can still suck breath in but stars are flashing at the edge of his vision, little speckles of light. No moon but stars at least, and he thinks _we are the night_ and he doesn't understand, except that's not right. They're not dark. So hot, burning but liminal, fading in and out with his vision and Rick almost thrusting against him, like he wants that too. Force his way in. Connected but halfway.

On the edges of things. Into and out of. He manages to reach down, grope for his own cock, get his zipper down and get a clumsy hand around himself, jerk just as clumsy with the rhythm they've built together, his own breath coming in sharp little whines. All he can do.

Edges and boundaries. Half measures. Not the night. They're crepuscular. All dawn and dusk.

Running wolves. He's rolled over and bared his throat.

He doesn't come until Rick comes, snapping his hips forward, almost knocking him off his feet. Held tighter, and it's like he has permission now. Rick was silent except for a hiss and a hard, rolling shudder, but Daryl is uneven, uncontrolled, just as clumsy as his hand, and he whimpers, whines sharper and thinner, spills hot over his fingers as he shivers all through.

Just breathing for a moment, the two of them, echoes off the concrete. Dimness. Hard to know if it's the end of the night or the beginning.

Rick lowers him and straightens up and for a moment Daryl stays there, on his knees, wishing so much he could get himself together. Figure out how to not be stupid and crazy anymore. Figure out how not to want this.

But he does. God.

And he knows what he's supposed to do now.

He turns, still crouching, looks up and can't quite see Rick's eyes, and wishes he could. To know if this worked. If he's wanted now. Needed.

Later he'll get that, that last word, and it'll mean everything. For a while.

But now, because he's stupid and crazy, he lifts his hand to his mouth and licks his fingers clean.

Rick's hand in his hair, suddenly, jerking his head back. Another whimper, his eyes squeezing shut. In this moment, anything to please him. _Loyalty_ means taking pain if that's what he feels like dishing out, and a sharp sting in his scalp isn't even all that bad. Kind of good. Counterpoint to the ache in his throat.

_Chokehold's illegal._

Fuck it, none of this should be legal.

Then he's alone.

He always gets left here. Wherever here is. That's how it's going to be, for a while. Until it's not anymore.

He gets left and he'll take it, because of what might come later. When they aren't in the dusk or the dawn. He believes it. Even now, he has faith.

Crazy and stupid. But like this, running like wolves, he somehow feels free.


	8. and stuff your mouth with cotton

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Days in the ASZ and Daryl is smashing through his breaking points. But being broken might be exactly what he needs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this thing has come roaring back and now appears to have some kind of plot-business going on. 
> 
> Two chapters back, Daryl collapsed in grief after Beth's death, somewhere in those missing three weeks between Atlanta and the ASZ. Something in me decided to pick that up and run with it, and I think the chapters after this - always assuming there are some but I think there will be, especially given the way this one ends - will address this more head-on. Rick and Daryl were both badly wounded by the loss of Beth, and it seems like I'm being internally pushed to explore some of how they might help each other heal. 
> 
> To that end, this chapter is not coy about Beth/Daryl - not in that anything happened, but in that Daryl was like totally in love with her you guys. In addition, there are some very vaguely implied Beth/Rick feelings going on in Rick's head here, and those might figure in more in later chapters as well. I'm not trying to drag this away from what it originally was because I don't like what it was - and given that Beth is not around and I already have a Beth Miraculously Comes Back And She And Daryl And Rick Get It On fic, this will not become that - but well, y'know, stories evolve. 
> 
> Anyway, I'm letting you know in case you are completely 100% Ew No when it comes to even references to those two pairings. 
> 
> Time-wise, I'm playing fast and loose with canon timelines here, so you could almost think of this as canon-divergent in some ways.
> 
> Finally: this is really really really really unhappy, and there is some very unsafe and potentially disturbing gunplay, as well as some pretty graphic violent imagery. There's smut, kinda, but it's not happy smut. So be aware.

Rick Grimes knows so much more than he ever wanted to.

The things he knows, the things he's _learned_ since he woke up in a world gone to thirty-two flavors of shit, they've been like wounds scarred over. They toughen. They've toughened _him_. Not in the sense he thinks people usually mean when they use the word; in his most honest moments he's not sure he's stronger for it. He needs to be, tells himself he is, tells himself he needs to be this way for them, no one else can - that if one of them takes it on himself to become a monster, no one else will have to.

But he thinks about all that scar tissue, dead nerves, and yes, it means less pain, but.

_Rest in peace. Now get up and go to war._

There are faces that roll sickeningly through his dreams, eyes death-pale, cheeks and brows half rotten and boiling with maggots, but the spark of themselves remains and they're looking at him like they wouldn't touch him with any length of pole. People he loved. People he believes once loved him, before they were ripped out of the world.

Her. Her face. There's been more than one Her, but this one...

It always comes to him, just before he lurches awake in this strange bed in this strange place where he knows he'll never truly be home. It comes to him in that gray liminal place between sleep and waking, where nothing at all is clear or well-defined - a moment of clarity so intensely sharp it flays him.

It comes to him that he's the only one who kissed her goodbye.

What Rick knows is that there isn't only one breaking point. There are so many. They never end. There is no limit to the ways in which you can break and be broken.

He's breaking all the time, he thinks. He just can't feel it anymore. It doesn't stop him, doesn't slow him down. He doesn't know how badly he's hurt. He doesn't know how severe the damage is, how deeply he's been cut, how much blood he's losing.

But he looks at Daryl and he thinks he might have some idea.

~

"Get it the fuck _together_."

He hisses it. He wouldn't yell even if he could. It's not something he does, not like this, and since the beginning - God, the beginning of this lunacy that somehow hasn't ended even now - things with them have been quiet. Silent, when possible. Everything bitten back, caged behind teeth and between jaws - groans, growls, cries. Words. And it should be over now, should have died bleeding back on that fucking hospital floor, but it didn't and it's not. It's not and they both know it. Even if nothing has happened since that day in the woods. Even if Daryl is dragging himself through the world, making an increasingly poor pretense of being alive. It's still there between them, still burning low red and sullen, throbbing like an infection.

Worse now.

So this is stupid, outside the walls with Daryl now, alone, hands on his chest and shoving him back against the concrete, pinning him there. Ostensibly this is because Daryl's takedown of that little weasel of a kid wasn't the last of it and his temper remains a problem, something that threatens to fuck this whole thing up if it isn't brought under some kind of control, but ostensibly is only _ostensibly_ and there's more. Of course there's more. Daryl's face is pale under the grime and the shadow of his hair - pale even in the colorless light of an afternoon threatening storms - haggard, deep-lined, his eyes narrow and burning black and cold, and one could miss the agony if one didn't know what to look for.

But it's there.

Daryl is breaking through point after point, smashing through, faster and faster, and this is going to end bad and probably bloody if something isn't done. And it's not about this place or its jumpy people or any possibility of staying here and digging in.

It's about her face.

Daryl snarls and shoves forward, matching force with equal force, and Rick feels the flex of tight, corded muscle. He likes that. Always has. If asked why this started, why he first wanted it, why Daryl, he couldn't say, couldn't pinpoint one thing, except that it's lunacy and it won't stop, and when he feels that muscle tensing and working his cock twitches in spite of himself.

And part of him is still insisting that this is too sick even for him.

"Fuck you." Teeth bared. Daryl barely looks human. Then again, he hasn't really looked fully human for a while. Rick doubts he _feels_ human. "Get the _fuck_ offa me, you-"

And then all his coherence - what little there was - is gone and he's all growling, all bestial, and Rick knows the fist is going to impact his jaw fractions of a second before it does and he's ready, even if he's not moving out of its path. He's taking it, because he has to, because he will, and then he's lunging, slamming his shoulder into Daryl's chest, fist driving into his gut. Hard exhale that jerks into a cough but Daryl's only doubled over for half a moment; he's up and Rick lets him rise, moving backward, braced as Daryl takes another swing and glances clumsily off Rick's cheekbone.

Bad punches. Poorly aimed, not much power behind them. Daryl could break Rick's face if he wanted to. Rick isn't sure which one of them would come out on top in an honest-to-god no-holds-barred throwdown, but he's never wanted to find out, because he knows it would be ugly. Beyond ugly. He knows there wouldn't be any winner.

And he doesn't want to hurt this man. Fuck, he _doesn't,_ watching Daryl's stricken face as he comes, throws himself at Rick, despair wrenching every movement. Daryl is clumsy because Daryl doesn't really want to hurt him either, he knows it with utter certainty, but Daryl is also clumsy because Daryl doesn't give a shit about what happens to himself. He's not in this to win.

He's in it to lose.

Rick catches him in the jaw, hears the sharp click of teeth and watches with detached fascination as Daryl's head whips back and he staggers. Watches him stagger more, backward, as Rick hits him again, and now there's blood at the corner of his mouth, and there will be bruises, on both of them, and there may or may not be questions.

He doesn't care. He's a walking scar. He wants to protect those people, would kill hundreds for them, might well die for them, but also, really?

Fuck them.

Because with Daryl it's not like anyone else, anything else and he might be a scar and he might be a monster but he's not going to be a liar. Not like this.

Daryl lands a blow against Rick's left side, ribs, and the breath explodes out of him but he stays standing, grips Daryl's shoulders and grapples, throws him to the side and spins. Daryl is already coming at him again, stance low and elbow up, clearly meaning to tackle, and that's when Rick seizes him by the hair and forces him to his knees with one swift, smooth, ruthless movement. Daryl goes down hard in the dirt and the litter of dry leaves, crunching and scattering them, his breath coming in pained gasps, slumped.

Surrendered.

Rick doesn't have to see his face to know that this is exactly what he wanted. He knew it from the first punch. Probably before that.

He stands, gazing down, and he isn't feeling any of his own pain. He knows it's there, but it's inconsequential. The entire world has narrowed to the flickering singularity that is Daryl Dixon clinging to any kind of life he can find, and that's...

Rick hadn't been sure. Now he is. If Daryl is clinging at all, there's still a chance.

He can help.

 _You sick fuck._ And he is. God, he is. He's been sick for a while, and this thing with Daryl is only a symptom. It had a long incubation period, but it's been there, waiting, flaring at intervals, and now it's burning through him. But he's aware of his own sickness with that same cool detachment. He doesn't really feel much about it either way. Daryl's sick - not in the same way but he is - and he hates himself. Rick doesn't.

Rick isn't sure he hates anyone anymore. Hatred might be beyond him now.

He isn't going to think about Her while he does this. He isn't going to think about what She would say if She saw it, and if She knew how far back it goes, how far it's gone. What Her face would do. What _She_ would do. Both of them, both these men he knows She loved, doing this to each other, because She's not here anymore.

 _What did you_ really _feel? About her? When you could still feel anything?_

No.

Daryl lifts his head, lolls it backward, stares up at Rick with sweat-damp strands of his hair plastered to his face, and his mouth is doing something horrible that might be some species of smile. Blood trickling from the corner of his lips, beading in and dripping off his scruff, and Rick thinks about dropping into a crouch, yanking Daryl close, licking it off him.

_You. Sick. Fuck._

Maybe sickness is what's required right now, in something probably infected beyond the point of no return.

Too far gone. Both of them.

Daryl flicks his haunted eyes away from Rick's face, slides them down his body, settles them on the Colt at his hip, and they tell Rick everything he needs to know, the direction in which all that sickness should be oriented, and in the time it takes to draw a breath it's out of the holster and the muzzle is pressed against Daryl's forehead.

And Daryl's eyes fall closed, and all Rick can see on his face is relief.

He thinks Rick might do it. He really does.

Rick knows he should be horrified. He knows it. It's _horrifying,_ nothing but that, this kind of desire and its purity and the knowledge that it's been there since they fled Atlanta, that it's been there since they walked out of the hospital and Daryl has been fighting it, trying to keep it from dragging him down, holding on by his splintering fingernails.

But now, to him, Rick is offering to help him let go. Rick is offering to let him fall.

_Are you?_

"Please," Daryl whispers, and Rick sees it in the flat gray light, sees it against the brown backdrop of a dying autumn forest in a world of the dead: the hammer back, the jerk of it in the silent shot - silent as it was when he watched Her fall. Right where the bullet went into her, except this is a .357 Magnum and the entire back of Daryl's head explodes in a splattering blur of blood and churned brain and broken chips of bone.

He would be smiling when it happened. Rick already knows this too.

What is he feeling, when he sees it?

He loves this man. He does. He loves this man more than he's ever loved almost anyone else, and he's been shit at showing it, he's been unbelievably selfish, he's been so cruel and he's not even sure why, but he loves Daryl and this should destroy him with the sheer intensity of his horror.

But instead he watches this movie reel of potential future unspool in his mind and he merely thinks _I could._

_It would be easy._

He doesn't think anyone would even ask all that many questions.

"Please," Daryl whispers again, leans almost imperceptibly against the muzzle with his hands loose and useless at his sides- and he whimpers softly when Rick withdraws the gun.

Whimpers again when Rick presses it against his bleeding lower lip, and in a way Rick can tell is almost entirely instinct, his mouth opens and he takes the barrel in.

Rick watches. Pushes it into him, slides it past Daryl's lips, watches them stretch to accommodate it, watches them curl wet and shining and streaking blood along gleaming metal as he withdraws just a little. And he can't be allowed to do that; this time the push is more of a thrust, in deep and fast, and Rick tilts his head when Daryl gags hard, shudders, and starts to lift a hand.

And stops.

Because, Rick thinks with darkly frozen amusement, he knows his place.

"Suck it," Rick says, and there's an edge to his voice, as cold as what he feels, but it's almost conversational. A suggestion. That Daryl might want to. That he should. Because he fucking will, and when Rick repeats it under his breath - _suck it now_ \- he does, takes it deep and lifts his head backward, in again, bobbing slowly with his eyes closed, and the tears trickling down his cheeks could be from gagging or they could be from something else.

Rick loves watching. Always has. Has never stopped to examine it, because he's never really stopped to examine what any of this means, at least not too closely, because he wants to continue to enjoy it. Watching it now, watching Daryl suck off his gun, the glide of _those lips, fuck, they were made for this,_ raking his left hand into Daryl's hair and gripping so tight it has to sting. Lifting him away, and Daryl knows exactly what this means, what Rick wants, and he licks up the barrel, licks with broad cat-sweeps of his tongue, and not one single bit of this is being faked. Daryl is sucking the gun like it's Rick's cock.

On some level Daryl may no longer be able to tell the difference.

"Suck it, bitch." He's hardly ever talked when they've done this, but now it's coming and he has no interest whatsoever in stopping it. His days of trying to pretend this isn't happening fell with the fences. Flat and rough between his teeth, every syllable a bullet fired. "Take it. Take it all. Fuck, look at you, you fuckin' love it, you slut." He jerks his hand in Daryl's hair and gets an agonized yelp for his trouble, holds him in place and starts to fuck his mouth-

And he doesn't feel it. He doesn't. He watches, he observes, head-cocked and interested, and he supposes what he feels can properly be called enjoyment, at least in a way, and his cock is throbbing hot and aching against his fly and he knows that if he let Daryl get his hand or his mouth on it, it would probably take less than a minute...

But he doesn't feel it.

She would hate him for this.

"You'll suck anything, you worthless fuckin' whore. Get your cock out." He jerks the barrel and collides with Daryl's teeth, gets a longer whimper out of him, almost a moan. A runner of bloody spit is extending from Daryl's chin and it catches his attention, its translucent pinkish gleam as somewhere below it Daryl fumbles his fly open and sobs thick and despairing as he pulls himself free.

Rick's gaze is still locked on that dangling bead of blood and saliva, following it as at last it falls, following it as it spatters onto the edge of Daryl's knuckle. His hand just as clumsy like this as it was in his punches, but also not faked. Fuck, no. He's this hard and this dark, all this blood packing his flesh, precome slicking his fingers, because of this gun, because of what it is, because all Rick has to do is pull back the hammer and squeeze one finger and turn half of Daryl's head into red mist.

He's holding the gun stationary again, letting Daryl do the work - damp hair hanging and dripping sweat even though there's no trace of summer heat in the air, cheeks streaked with tears and spit and blood, drooling as he slides his lips up and down the barrel and moans, and the smacking, sticky sound of his hand working his shaft.

Like if he can make the gun come he'll get what he wants. He'll get it that way. Die on his knees with his dick in his hand and his skull burst open. Die without a shred of dignity because what the fuck good is dignity when sweet girls fall down dead in hallways for no fucking reason whatsoever.

"C'mon, make yourself come. C'mon, you little bitch, the fuck's the matter with you? Thought you wanted this." Harsher. Maybe he doesn't hate Daryl, maybe he doesn't feel that way at all, but hell if it isn't starting to sound that way. "Get yourself off, you useless piece of shit. Look at you, Jesus fuckin' _Christ_... Know what, slut? You ain't good enough for my cock. This is what you get. This is _all_ you get. So take it all down your filthy whore throat and make me believe you fuckin' _want_ it."

Her face. No. No, not here, he doesn't want to feel that. _Look away,_ he's screaming - some part of him, a part that isn't all scarred over, a part clinging to the same life Daryl is. Even now. _Oh God, Beth, sweetheart, don't look at this, don't look at him. Don't look at me. Please, just go._

_We're already gone._

He twists Daryl's hair into a grip so tight he feels strands rip loose, leans close, and lets it come.

"What the fuck would she _think_ if she could see you now?"

It's like he pulled the trigger anyway.

Daryl's whole body _whipcracks,_ straining, convulsing, a ragged sob muffled around the gun's barrel as he comes so _hard,_ spurting across the leaves in two quick jets and spilling the rest in thick pulses over his fist. And it doesn't stop there; he's still jerking himself, still sucking, desperate whines escaping through the corners of his mouth.

Because he still doesn't have it. What he wanted. His eyes lifted to Rick's, pleading, and maybe later he'll abandon it to temporary insanity, maybe it'll be like it wasn't there at all, but right now it's there and it's pouring out of him like tears.

_Please. I just want to go to her._

_Send me._

Rick closes his eyes and clenches his jaw so tight his teeth creak. _Beth, don't look._

He releases Daryl's hair and withdraws the gun.

Daryl falls like everything holding him up has been taken from him - which it has. It absolutely has. He tumbles into the dirt, caking it onto his come-slick hand, his already filthy cheek and into the tracks of his tears, leaves nestling into the wet tangles of his hair. He's heaving, head turned and face half visible, a long smear of congealing blood up the side of his jaw. One arm is twisted awkwardly under him, his legs sprawling.

But for his deep, helpless shuddering, he doesn't move.

Except then he begins to weep, and it's awful.

It's not awful because it's loud. It's not. It's almost silent. He's shaking, shaking like an earthquake, face screwed up and his dirt-caked hand lifting to make a feeble attempt at hiding himself, but as the sobs roll through him they do so quietly. It's not like what happened before in the woods, on the road afterward. It's crying like bleeding. Flowing in rhythmic pumps and taking everything with it.

Rick stares down at him, gun loose in his hand, dangling at his side. Maybe Daryl's collapsed like a body with no skeleton, but Rick feels like a puppet with no strings.

He called Daryl _useless_. That's so damn funny.

He understands, suddenly, the one thing he's feeling now as he observes this scene, and it's envy. Because he wants this. He wants what he's seeing. It would be better, if he could feel. He would be stronger. Daryl is lying curled in front of him, all this pain and guilt and shame gushing from him like a new spring, and he's broken but he's bearing it. He's alive.

He's stronger than Rick will ever be.

He holsters the gun and follows Daryl down, lands roughly on his knees, reaches for him, and curling his arms under Daryl's and pulling him in is like handling a corpse, but at least Daryl isn't resisting him.

And it's not really like a corpse. Not so much.

 _I'm sorry,_ Rick is thinking - maybe murmuring, as he curls himself over Daryl's crumpled form in a pathetic attempt at an embrace. _I'm sorry it was me. I'm sorry it wasn't you, it should have been you - you should have given her that kiss. Just that one. That final one. You._

_It wouldn't make anything better now but it still should have been you._

He pulls Daryl closer, and this time he's not trying to do it alone. This time Daryl crawls - weak as an infant but he does - and presses his upper body half into the cradle of Rick's lap, folded in on himself, still wracked with sobbing. And Rick does his best, does what he can with his arms, does some folding of his own, and inside he regards his own numbness with dull hopelessness.

And after a little while everything settles.

He doesn't know how long. There's no sun but the quality of the light changes. Later afternoon; he hasn't heard even the most distant sound of walkers - thank _Christ,_ because this was frankly pretty stupid - but they should clean themselves up the best they can and get back, try to figure out where and how to continue from here.

More of the same, probably.

But Daryl has turned over in his lap and is looking up at the trees, and though his face is still a grimy mess - though _he's_ a grimy mess - a kind of calm has stolen over him that Rick hasn't seen before.

Daryl licks his bloody lips, swallows, speaks in a voice almost too low and too rough to be understood.

"Why does it hurt like this?"

Rick gazes down at him. Without him intending it his hand has found its way back into Daryl's hair and this time it's stroking him, fingers working through the snarls. But his hand stills, everything stills, and he takes a breath.

_How the fuck can you ask me that?_

But... Christ, maybe Daryl really doesn't know. It never occurred to Rick that it might not have occurred to _him_. Or that he knows, but he doesn't have the deeper knowledge necessary for understanding. That something so new has entered his world that he simply isn't able to process its existence in the context of himself. That maybe he really does need someone else to tell him.

Someone who doesn't feel, to tell him how he's feeling.

"Because you were in love with her," he says softly, and then nothing else.

"Oh."

Just that. _Oh._ Everything in that. He hears it: gentle enlightenment. Hardly enlightenment at all; of course Daryl knew. Even if he didn't know he did.

Anyway, now everyone is on the same page.

But he's opening his mouth to mutter something about getting back when Daryl lifts a hand - his moderately cleaner hand - and touches Rick's cheek, and Daryl has never in his life touched Rick like that and it stops him dead. Just completely halts his forward motion. _Any_ motion. He was ready for what happened here - he was ready for this breakage, this collapse, and this cruelty - but he's not ready for this. There was never any way to be.

Almost three years of sick love in three dirty fingertips.

Because yes, that's what it always was. Somehow.

"You have to let yourself feel it," Daryl whispers.

Rick blinks at him. Like before, he doesn't think; the words just come. "I can't."

"You have to. Or it'll kill you." Daryl never touched him like that before; Daryl has never smiled like this before. It doesn't look like it belongs on his face. It doesn't look like his smile. It looks like it belongs to someone else. He lowers his hand, touches those three fingers to his chest, right beneath his collarbones.

"Here."

Rick looks down him for a long, long moment. Not even a moment; _moment_ implies he can bracket it out, separate it from the rest of the flow of time. He can't. He just looks down, and at some point he finds some way of speaking again.

What he feels.

"Maybe I want it to."

Daryl lets his hand fall away, shakes his head. The smile is gone but the calm remains. "I don't." He pauses. "She wouldn't."

 _God, would you fucking stop._ "She's dead."

"Don't matter."

"Don't fuckin'-"

"You said I was your brother." Daryl isn't whispering anymore, though his voice is still so low, still so soft. And Rick doesn't know if he's ever heard Daryl _sound_ like this, either. "Asked me to stay. Said you needed me."

Rick says nothing. He has nothing to say to it. He looks up and away, off into the shadows gathering among the trees, everything so quiet, and it could be because a storm is coming or because one has just roared through. And he's grinding his teeth again, breath coiled in his chest, because fuck, he doesn't want this. He doesn't. He was supposed to be the one doing the breaking here. He wasn't supposed to be the one getting broken. That's not how this works. That's not how this has _ever_ worked.

"We don't have to do this anymore." Daryl's fingers again, on the back of his hand. Tracing over his knuckles. Rick shivers. He doesn't want to. He does anyway. "I got nothin'. What d'you got?" He shakes his head again. "We don't have to. We can do it different now. If you want."

Rick clenches his hands, his jaw, clenches his eyes shut, clenches everything. "Daryl-"

"I don't wanna die." Soft laugh, very dry. Like the rustle of the leaves when the breeze stirs them. It smells like rain. "I mean... I do. I wanna die. I wanna die all the time, I wanna... I wanted you to kill me. I still do. But I don't _want_ to want that. I'm so fuckin' tired. I don't wanna do this anymore."

His tracing fingers coalesce and become a hand, rough and big and warm, closing over the back of Rick's, and he pulls in a huge, slow breath, releases it. When Rick opens his eyes he sees that Daryl's gaze has fallen back into the trees, slightly unfocused. Distant.

"She wanted me to try."

Rick waits, but Daryl has fallen silent and remains that way. The wind is picking up. A few fat drops are pattering down through the branches above them.

Far in the distance he hears moans.

So they'll go inside. They'll go inside because they have to, and they'll keep moving because they have to, and he'll keep piling scar on top of scar, resting in peace, getting up and going to war, over and over and over.

~

Except that night, tonguing a cut on the inside of his cheek he hadn't realized was there, he can't stop thinking about it. His mind tongues at it just like that tiny wound, tasting copper.

_We don't have to do this anymore._

So what would they do instead?

He lies there in this bed - a bed far too comfortable to sleep easy in - staring at the shadows as they drift across the ceiling like the questions in his mind, following them with a gaze only half present and half directed. He works over the shape of them, the words and the phrasing, the phonemes and the morphology, the deeper meanings. The questions and everything that goes with them.

The questions, and three fingertips, and three words he's said only once to this man. But he meant them then. He meant them and he knows that for all his scars and for all his numbness, if he said them again he still would.

And Her face is there. And he looks into Her eyes and he can't look away.

So finally, so deep into the night that there's nothing between it and morning, he gets out of bed and goes downstairs in nothing but his shorts, goes out onto the porch where he knows Daryl won't be sleeping, and he does what he has to do.


	9. imagine a room, a sudden glow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, it's been a while. But I really wanted to continue this, especially given where we left off. I also feel like we're coming to a conclusion, and in fact this may be the next to last chapter. It just feels like we're approaching a good stopping point. We'll see. 
> 
> If you remember this and you're happy to see it again, ❤️. I hope you'll think it's worth the wait.

 

> _Here is my hand, my heart,_  
>  _my throat, my wrist. Here are the illuminated_  
>  _cities at the center of me, and here is the center_  
>  _of me, which is a lake, which is a well that we_  
>  _can drink from, but I can’t go through with it._  
>  _I just don’t want to die anymore._
> 
> \- Richard Siken

 

Rick stands behind Daryl for a long, long moment.

Knew he'd be on the porch, on the front steps, and knew he'd be smoking. Sporting the bruises from earlier. The blood. Barely cleaned himself up, and in the dimness Rick can see leaves still in his hair. He wonders if anyone asked him about it. Probably not; no one asks questions like that about Daryl right now. Daryl is Daryl. Behavior like this is expected. He's practically gone feral and everyone learned weeks ago that trying to drag him out of it with any genuine force gets nobody anywhere they want to be.

You're lucky if he'll give you a complete sentence consisting of more than three words.

And he still hasn't showered. Days now and he still hasn't.

The cigarette flashes like a spark when Daryl withdraws it from his lips, holds it almost delicately between forefinger and thumb, exhales smoke at the street. He knows Rick is there. Has known it since Rick opened the door, even if Rick was almost perfectly silent - the way he's learned to be, better than he ever expected.

Daryl knows Rick is here because Daryl knew Rick would come.

What he's guessing Daryl _doesn't_ know is why.

Rick is sure Daryl had and has things for which he's still hoping. Somehow. Somehow even though it makes no sense for him to hope at all anymore, and Rick gets that too, because there's one place he now understands Daryl's hope was sourced from, and maybe Daryl built up enough of a surplus that even now it's not all exhausted. Even now he's still fighting.

Of course he is. He was fighting before. He's been fighting since Atlanta, fighting every second of every plodding mile. He was fighting in the woods and in the midst of heat and thirst and pain that broke all of them, and he was fighting in that fucking barn when he wouldn't let himself be made into a walker without even being bitten. He's been fighting since he walked through those gates, beating blindly at his demons even as they swarm all over him and flay him alive from the inside out. Even with the gun in his mouth, sucking it off, he was fighting.

Because he'll go through hell if it means he can come out a human being on the other side.

Rick is just willing to go through hell.

_We don't have to do this anymore._

But there are old ways in which this might go, according to a very old script. A routine they both know, that what happened only a few hours ago won't have disrupted if Rick refuses to let it be so. So he could bend and grip Daryl by the shoulder, the back of the neck, his _hair,_ drag him to his feet with the casual cruelty of someone who built up a literally insane tolerance for cruelty a long damn time ago, drag him into the shadows behind the house or even down to the fucking basement because a bedroom is far too good for this, far too _civilized_ , and put him back on his knees where he belongs and whisper that he's _a bitch, a worthless fucking slut_ and hurt him as much as he can with those words and those subtle, cold denials, because ever since that day in the woods he hasn't been able to give this man anything but pain.

Or.

_We don't have to do this anymore._

Daryl was crumpled, bleeding, weeping, filthy with fresh dirt and the grime of weeks of despair, and he was still the one extending his hand. He was the one offering salvation.

He would know, of course, that no one else could. Not like this.

Rick can reach back. The only question is what will happen when his hand makes contact.

He bends slightly, extends it-

And touches Daryl's shoulder, feather-light, and it's like something has touched his point of resonance and he's run through with cracks. Ready to shatter.

Like someone was singing.

Everything in Daryl loosens under that touch. Just his fingertips, but he can feel it, the tension flowing out, dissipating like smoke, every coiled spring in every one of his muscles unwinding its potential explosion, and there won't be any more outbursts like the one before. There won't be any more stupid fights. He won't have to haul Daryl off anyone else. He knows it instantly, because he has all the evidence he'll ever need.

Daryl won't have to haul him.

Maybe they can hold onto each other, and it'll be enough.

"Daryl," he whispers - the whisper in which he might have said those other awful things - and that's all it takes. Daryl grinds the cigarette out on the steps and flicks the sparking remains onto the wet grass, rises, turns, and follows him silently back inside.

~

In the bathroom they strip each other out of their clothes.

It's night just edging into dawn, and the lights are off but the room is now cast in thin gray light that strips everything of its color. Daryl is all shades of gray bleeding into black - mostly black - and as he pulls the shirt off over his head Rick thinks about how he's been getting darker since Atlanta, not his flesh but his hair and eyes, as if shadows are seeping into him and collecting like arsenic. He's all shadow now, but the first hints of the light catch him as Rick undresses him, his filthy skin, the sharp angles of his face, and he doesn't swallow that light.

He reflects.

Daryl has more in the way of clothes to remove and he stands docile, allows Rick to do it, head slightly lowered. And when Rick is done he moves, moves without seeming to move at all, and it's like Rick takes a breath and he's naked, both of them, standing so close - and they never have been. Naked. Together.

Not like this.

They don't touch. But Rick can feel Daryl's gaze on him as he leans into the shower and cuts on the water, and when he steps in and offers a hand Daryl takes it without a word, curls their fingers together, joins them.

Joins him.

And for what feels like a long while there's nothing. Daryl doesn't let go, Rick doesn't try to pull free. There's something so stunningly _new_ about this, about someone's hand in his, about someone's naked, slick body herding him back against the tile - not for any single purpose, at least not yet, but simply because the shower is small and the space between them feels so unnecessary, its maintenance so pointless. Daryl holds his hand and presses close, stands under the spray with his wet hair falling into his face and dripping onto his chest, onto Rick's, and Rick stares down at the shower floor between them, at the gray water swirling as all those weeks slough away.

The pain will stay. He can still feel it.

_He can feel it._

He can feel. Not much, but he can, and it isn't merely hardening him even further. Scars on top of scars.

He settles his free hand on Daryl's hip and he _leans_.

He's done this. Leaned. They both have. Leaning and groping, grappling, clumsily fumbling between each other. Greedy. This isn't that. This is slow, soft, and Daryl doesn't release his hand as he curls his other arm around Rick's shoulders and holds him.

It's never been like this.

Maybe it could have been like this all along.

He turns his head, tucks his face into the hollow of Daryl's throat. He opens his mouth and tastes the water - faintly salty, a little metallic, grit on his tongue - and smells him, lingering sweat and blood and the smoke of campfire after campfire, and somehow none of it unpleasant. Without thinking he flicks his tongue, laps at skin rough with stubble, and Daryl sighs and breathes something that might be his name or might not be at all.

It doesn't matter.

Time drifts. He slides his arm around Daryl's waist and settles more of his weight there, and Daryl bears him up, lips against the crown of his head. Without noticing, he got hard - they both did - and his cock is pressing into the crease of Daryl's thigh, lined up, the slightest friction when they move. It feels good but it's not much more than a low hum under his nerves, blending with everything else - the heat of the water, air thickened by steam, the tile cool against his back.

Then it's more when Daryl slips a hand between them and takes hold of him. A lot more.

He twitches. Stiffens. Because this is edging back in that direction, the thing they don't have to do anymore, swirling red and black in his head. He thinks about guns, teeth, musty basements and cellars, come spattered across a dirty floor. Across dirty skin. Whimpers and panting. Daryl on his knees, slumped, alone.

Maybe Daryl thinks he never looked back, all those times.

He feels his own face pull into a grimace. _What the fuck were we even doing._ He doesn't know. He never knew. Somehow it was easier when it hurt. Someone has reached into his chest and gripped his heart and lungs, is twisting them and jamming them up into his throat, and he shudders as Daryl gives him one slow, easy stroke and Rick almost shoves him away.

He doesn't want to do this anymore. Maybe he has to walk out of this room and be a monster so no one else has to be, maybe he has to get up and go to war, but he wants the war in here to _end,_ he wants to lay down his arms, and he's been carrying them for so long that - he now understands - he doesn't even know how.

He's trembling. He can't stop. He can't move at all as Daryl holds him up, lips against his temple and fingers curled tight around his cock, and finally a quiet sob wrenches out of him, loosening that knot in his chest, and it's like a sob he's been waiting to release for almost a year. He's pinned between the wall and Daryl's broad, solid chest and he _can_ be pinned, it's okay; he can shake and roll his hips into Daryl's fist and Daryl will hold him, be gentler with him than Rick has ever been, breath hot against his ear.

_It's alright. It's alright, Rick. We can. We can._

Daryl is working him faster, hand moving in smooth pulses, just like Rick wants it because he's learned, he's always been a fast learner and it was perhaps a little surprising how quickly he picked up exactly how Rick Grimes likes to be jerked off. Because under the growling and the bristling he's always been eager to please. He's always wanted that. Eager like a kicked dog, like this time Rick might praise him for it. Tell him he's good.

His face, when _you're my brother_ hung in the air between them. His _face._

Every organ in Rick's body twisting in on itself.

 _I'm sorry._ He's almost moaning. _Oh my God, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry, I'm-_ In time with the slides of Daryl's fist, and Daryl shakes his head, holds him even tighter, holds him together. All those cracks running through him like veins. Bleeding out into Daryl's palms. This man he's watched breaking and breaking, this man he's broken, this walking ruin of a human being who nevertheless refuses to lie down and die, refuses to be anything less than human. Giving him permission to break.

_Let yourself feel it._

It rises in him like a warm, heavy tide and as it comes he raises his head and seals their mouths together, another sob ripping free as Daryl receives him and he tastes blood and cigarette smoke and what he recognizes with faint horror as gun oil, and he's crumpling - or he would be - a deep quake, shuddering and spurting between them, slick on his own belly and on Daryl's fingers, spilling into the streaming water.

And it hurts so much. That's what he feels. It hurts so _much,_ and it's all those faces, all those dead faces in his haunted brain, and so he wouldn't lose anyone else he let himself die _here_ and what she would think of him now.

Of them.

He kissed her goodbye. He didn't know it then but he did.

It feels like he's still coming, how fiercely he's shaking, but then he realizes that he's crying, forehead against Daryl's shoulder as nearly silent heaves roll through him. He hasn't, he _doesn't,_ not for her and not for anyone, but now he is, and Daryl is carding careful fingers into his hair, murmuring things he can't understand.

All he can see is her face. Not from that fucking hallway. When she was holding Judith in the yard, hair shining in the sun, _all_ of her shining, _radiant,_ and she was smiling at him.

At them.

He opens his eyes, looks down. The water between them is running clear.

Clean.

~

The spray is lukewarm into cooling when he picks himself up, gets some shampoo into his hand and begins to work it through the dark tangles of Daryl's hair.

He feels scraped. Raw but like something scrubbed. Cleansed to the point of pain. Hollow, and a little numb, but only because he's so fucking tired. And he's functional, he can _do_ things, and he's beginning to feel like this might be the first time he's ever truly _touched_ this man.

So he does. He touches Daryl everywhere. And it's not even about fucking. Not about _wanting_ to. Daryl is still hard, burning slick whenever Rick's hand passes over him there, but as when Rick undressed him he simply stands with his eyes closed, not resisting or guiding. But also not passive; there are points at which Rick's fingers brush his and he twitches them, catches him for a few seconds, or when Rick cups his face with a slightly wondering hand and he presses into it. Nuzzles.

He's offering himself. Like everything else here, it's nothing like before. He's not desperate, he's not starving for every scrap of contact. He's not eager to please. He's sure he's being pleasing simply by being here. Secure in the idea that he's giving Rick what Rick needs.

Something happened and now everything is different, and Rick has no idea when it was, that moment, and like so many other things now it doesn't matter.

He touches. He explores with unhesitating and slippery hands, over Daryl's chest, under his arms, sides, belly and hips and the creases of his thighs, his cock, his balls. Over his back, the awful scars he knows are there but which neither of them have ever spoken about, though he has his guesses. Downward - and here a fine shiver ripples across Daryl's skin like breeze-stirred water - into the slight dip at the small of his back, over the swell of his ass, past his tailbone and below it and...

In.

The part of his mind that isn't stunned into immobility is sure that now Daryl will jerk away, face twisting, demand to know what the fuck he's doing because this is _too far_. But that's stupid, there's no such thing with them and hasn't been for a while now, and when his fingertips pass over the tight ring of muscle there and _press,_ just a little, just experimenting... Daryl releases a heavy sigh and arches, presses back.

Like he wants this.

Like maybe he's wanted this for a long time.

_God, we could have had it. We could have fucking had it if I wasn't such a fucking coward and maybe some things would have been different. Maybe everything would have. Maybe that would have been the goddamn butterfly: flap its wings at a different time and suddenly fences don't fall and people don't die and she's there and she's alive and she's smiling._

Not this. Not yet.

Could be soon.

He withdraws his hand and the world breathes out. And in. And breathes.

The light is pale and gray, but it's real light, and now he can see what's under his hands: see the thick cords of muscle beneath the skin, the too-visible bones of someone who hasn't eaten well in months and still isn't. The scars and the ink, and everything he knows he knew and didn't know at all. He can see that Daryl is beautiful, probably in a way he has no idea of, and he presses close again and curves their mouths together with a soft moan and thinks again about her, about seeing this from the outside, and he thinks they might be beautiful together. The two of them.

She might see this, these men holding onto each other, these two men who loved her so much, who love her now, and it might be all right.

Everything might be all right.

~

It's not that he's been afraid someone would find out. Fear never really entered into this. God, no, he didn't want anyone to know. Lori, Christ. Carl. Michonne, Carol. Any of them. Her. Her, and she was always perceptive, always saw so much, and in the last few weeks she could have seen anything, he's wondered just how much she really did see.

But it was never about fear. So he's not trying to hide anything when he takes Daryl's hand again and leads him, still damp from the shower, into the bedroom.

The sun is almost fully up and the room - simple, spare, not home and it won't be and anyway he doesn't think he knows how to make anywhere into a home anymore - is soaked in new sunlight, but it feels less real than it did when the light was less than half there and devoid of any color. It's all soft, all blurred at the edges, and even Daryl's harder lines aren't as hard, as he turns by the bed, thick hand still curled around Rick's, and looks at him with an expression Rick has no idea how to read.

And he's used to reading Daryl. Even when hardly anyone else can. An awful way to know someone, but they know each other that way by now, and very fucking well.

But Daryl's eyes are hooded, dark, and anything could be in those depths.

This is a beginning. As such, it's very fragile. Delicate. Soft like a new moth’s wing. Soft like Daryl’s hands somehow manage to be when he raises them and frames Rick’s face, tips their foreheads together, speaks in a whisper like the passage of those new wings.

“I don't wanna die anymore.” His thumbs stroke over Rick’s cheekbones, and Rick catches the barest edge of a sweet, sad smile. “You can stop killing me now.”

Like he’s truly giving Rick permission.

Permission to do more, even if he's not saying it, and Rick takes it without thinking about it, because if he does he might not be able to go on, might not be strong enough for this. He's been broken open but not as wide as he could be, not _nearly_ as wide, and it's like falling when he lays his hands against Daryl’s shoulders and pushes him back and down.

It's actually very easy.

It's easy because he _is_ falling, because Daryl is accepting him, arms wrapping around him and one calloused hand splayed against his shoulderblade as the other rakes into his hair. He's falling into the kiss, the lips parting under his and tongue curling inside and coaxing him in, and Daryl draws him further onto the bed as Rick crawls over and settles himself between strong, spread thighs, joining moans as Daryl’s cock presses into his hip

He didn't know. He didn't know this was here.

 _Let me live._ He's not speaking. Neither of them are. The only noises in the room are their sighs, things that almost manage to be whispers, slide of skin on skin and the wet sounds of their mouths as they work together. But it's thundering through his head, and he's not certain it's confined there. _Let me live, I want to live._

_Brother, let me live with you._

Without meaning to he's slipped into a rhythm, a slow roll of his hips that Daryl’s rising to meet with one leg hooked over the back of his thigh. Unhurried - they don't have to hurry. They don't have to hide this from anyone. He doesn't have to hide it from _himself,_ and the fist that closes around his heart might be what drags his lips down the stubble beneath Daryl’s chin to his throat, his collarbones, lapping at the hollow between them, and Daryl is tipping his head back and gripping Rick’s upper arms and panting _oh Christ, please._

Because they don't have to hurt anymore, and they don't have to hurry, but they've both still waited too long.

It's a different kind of _please._ It's not that kind of begging. It's edged with a ghost of a smile, eager, and he pins Daryl’s hips to the mattress as he shifts down his body, trailing a single long, open-mouthed kiss over his chest and ribs and the hard plane of his stomach.

So many fucking scars. They both have so many.

The worst ones aren't the kind you can see.

He's never done this. Maybe he should be nervous. Maybe he should be _scared,_ maybe he should be giving this up for insanity and scrambling his clothes on and heading for the door, but yesterday he fucked this man’s mouth with a gun and dropped him weeping into the dirt, and this…

This is easy.

He doesn't think Daryl ever really wanted all that much from him, in the end.

He's had Daryl’s cock in his hand before. But closing a hand around him now, he raises wide eyes and Daryl is gazing back at him, braced up on his elbows, his eyes equally wide and very clearly blue as the morning sun pours into them. Shining, as he strokes his fingers down the ridge of Rick’s cheek.

No fear. No shame. Maybe yesterday it flooded out of Daryl and left him empty. Washed. Ready to be filled with something else.

Rick can _feel_ it, as he closes his eyes and takes him in.

Daryl tastes like he smells - thick, musky, salty that somehow dances along the border of sweetness. He's heavy on Rick’s tongue, just the head and the slickness of his precome and then his shaft, lips stretching, a ragged groan drifting down to him as two sets of fingers tangle into his hair. It's good, he tastes so _good,_ feels so _fucking good_ , and Rick curls a hand around the base of him and knows that it doesn't matter if he's clumsy and awkward, as he slides down and takes him deep.

Not as deep as he wants; he nearly gags and feels a faint pang of frustration as he pulls back, but he glances up again and it vanishes. Because Daryl is laid out helpless, fallen back with his face turned into the sun and dense moans forcing their way past his lips, the look on his face almost pained.

Power ripples through him - unexpected. But it _is_ power. What he can do here, what he can give, and when he flickers the tip of his tongue against Daryl’s slit, those closed eyes clench tight and lips draw back from teeth bared in a whine.

_Please, Rick._

At first he's not even sure he said it. Everything is gauzy, dreamlike even in the brightening sun, and it's hard to be sure. But Daryl’s eyes flick open and meet his, and he's sure he did.

_Come for me. I want you to come for me._

_Daryl, I want to make you come._

He knows it won't take long. Simultaneously, time melts away and loses all its importance and there's only the glide of his lips up and down Daryl’s shaft and the whimpers he's drawing out of him with every sweep of his tongue, Daryl’s legs falling open wider and his hands fumbling as if he needs something to anchor him. Rick isn't thinking about himself, might as well not _exist_ , and once again it's like free-fall, utterly pure, nothing but air on all sides.

Breath. Daryl sobbing now, biting the heel of his palm in an effort to be quiet, hips stuttering upward and then everything tightening into a single bright point, and when it bursts open it's like he's bursting _with_ it, pleasure like an echo of his own climax blooming inside him as Daryl desperately muffles his cry with his hand and arches into a convulsion and spills hot and salty onto Rick’s tongue.

He's not totally conscious of swallowing what he's given. He only knows he does.

All those times before, there would always be this moment of stillness after, and it lurched like something drunk and punched sick. He hated that stillness, hated staring down at Daryl on his knees, hated _Daryl,_ hated himself in the dimmest, coldest possible way for doing it _again,_ like he couldn't control himself, like something in him was monstrously ravenous and wouldn't let him stop tormenting this man - who so deeply wanted to be tormented.

Now it's still. But it's just…

It's still.

In that stillness he lies with his head pillowed on the inside of Daryl’s thigh and Daryl works loose fingers through his hair, his breath coming slow and deep. And it's all right.

It's all right to lift himself back up and over, settle half at Daryl’s side and half on top of him, all right to pull him close and intertwine their legs - skin still damp - and run his hands over that scarred back and nod their mouths together.

It's not even really kissing. Kissing involves more movement than this. This is something else.

It's all something else.

 _I love you_. The words bleed into the air. They're unmoored in time. They're being said in a constant stream and they're not being said at all. They underlie another rough sigh from either or both of them as someone pulls up the covers, and then the sunlight makes seeing irrelevant. It's all simply brightness.

She was bright. She was brilliant. Under his hand and his lips that last time before it all fell apart, she was warm and it's warm now, and he thinks, Daryl lying pressed all along him with his muscles unwinding into sleep, that he would want her to see this. That this is something he would want her to know. That there was a storm but it ended, and even if she didn't make it out the other side, some part of her did.

He can feel it. It hurts. But maybe it should.

 _I love you, brother._ Lips moving into the shaggy, clean mess of Daryl’s hair, over his skin. _We don't have to do this anymore. We can do it different now. I love you, so we can._

_We can live._


End file.
